Wednesday, September 7, 2016

In our ongoing effort to find tasty things for us to make ourselves and can for later, Willie and I set about making chili sauce for topping our hot dogs. Everyone likes a chili dog, right? We began our search for a good no-bean chili recipe and came across this recipe at Taste of Home. We modified it to fit our own use by taking the hot dogs out and increasing the sauce to meat ratio somewhat, so that it would be better for canning. Here is the recipe we devised:

3 lbs ground beef, cooked and drained

5 15oz cans tomato sauce

⅔ c worcestershire

5 Tbsp dried minced onion

2 ½ tsp garlic powder

2 ½ tsp mustard powder

2 ½ tsp chili powder

2 ½ tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp cayenne pepper, heaping

Your first step should be to brown and drain your ground beef. This gives a better flavor, texture, and appearance to the meat than it would have if you just lumped it all in the crock pot raw.

Next, add in the tomato sauce.

Finally, measure out your flavorings and seasonings This recipe is pretty easy in that all of the seasonings are dry. No chopping onions for you!Stir it all up and put the lid on. Allow it to cook for about 4-5 hours on low. Just long enough to warm it up and allow the flavors to mingle a bit.Once it is good and hot, turn your crock pot to "keep warm" and start preparing your jars and equipment for canning.

If you need help with canning equipment, please see my blog post on the subject. Otherwise, continue on to my Basics of Canning page for further instructions on preparing home-canned food. Please note that we processed our chili sauce as though it were spaghetti sauce with meat. Please check your pressure canner's instruction manual for directions on how long to process your sauce, and at what pressure.